Why cheap web hosting isn’t always the best solution

We’ve all heard the timeless saying “you get what you pay for.”

From shopping on Amazon to crawling through Craigslist, we can easily spend an exorbitant amount of time to find what we want for a relatively cheap price.

But in the world of web hosting, the cheapest service doesn’t necessarily translate into the best option.

Cheap price = less resources. While your site might not immediately need a ton of resources, it’ll eventually need more as it grows. Unfortunately, cheap web hosting providers don’t provide a ton of resources for customers, especially when they try and jam as many customers into a single server as an “economical” solution.

Cheap hosting can mean ads, ads, ads and more ads. They may be cheap but many of these web hosting providers need to find another channel to generate revenues. In some cases, these providers require customers to feature ads on their site. Unfortunately, these ads are beyond your control and can even feature competitors.

Lack of data privacy. The cheapest options generally mean that you’ll be hosting your website content and customer data in the US. Privacy laws in the United States are much weaker than those in Canada, therefore when your data is stored on servers run out of the United States, US authorities are free to monitor your online activities and even block access to your own data without a court order should they desire.

Total cost of ownership. Read the fine print and do the math to uncover the total cost of ownership. Will your plan jump up in price when it comes time to renew? What about your “free” domain, will it still be included when year two rolls around.

The cheap web hosting plan in action

There’s nothing wrong with trying to save a few dollars, and we all do it from time-to-time. So let’s say that you signed up for a plan from a cheap web host and you receive:

Free do-it-yourself website builder

1 GB bandwidth (how much traffic your site can support per month)

500 MB storage (the number of files you can add to your site)

Since the hosting provider also offers a free website builder, you decide to take a shot at building a website by yourself. As a result, you save a few dollars a year on your website.

Everything’s going great; you’ve built your site, created different pages to showcase your product and you’ve even set up an e-commerce option. It’s now launch day and just after clicking on the “publish” button, you notice a square block on the right column of your site serving ads but you ignore it since it’s irrelevant.

Fast forward to a month, you notice that your site keeps crashing every few days and instead of making money on your site, it’s actually bleeding visitors due to more targeted ads that show up. When you call their support team, it turns out that you can’t do anything to turn it off because your subscription requires you to feature ads on the site and they made no guarantee how stable your site will be.

This is where a better and affordable web hosting plan that offers you full control, more resources and support, can help your business online.

A more sensible web hosting option

With that in mind, let’s say you purchased the most affordable plan to build a website with a 6-month term from Webnames.ca. Right off the bat, you get:

A free domain name so you can customize the name of your website.

FTP server access so you can securely upload files.

Unlimited storage and bandwidth to support a site’s needs.

15 spam-free and ad-free email accounts that you can customize with your domain name. (Think: yourname@yourbiz.com)

SSD server powered websites for improved and reliable stability.

You also want to build a mobile-friendly website so visitors can access your website from any device. But this time, you want a reliable platform. Your plan also comes with multiple apps that you can install with a single click, including the popular WordPress platform.

At this point, you’ve already saved a few dollars on your domain name and email addresses. And the best part of paying for an affordable web hosting plan? It’s completely ad free. It’s content, message and layout are completely under your control.

So how do you choose an affordable and reliable web host?

It starts with research. Just like any product, you need to be smart when purchasing a product, especially when it has an impact on your business. While free or a $1.99 price might sound like a great bargain, dive deeper into the plan so you can nail down the right web hosting plan for your website.

If you’d like to learn more about how Webnames.ca can help, check out our website hosting plans and spend a few minutes browsing through it. If you need more help, call our Support Team at 1-866-221-7878 and we can help you find the best web hosting plan for your website.

And if you choose to host with Webnames, use code HOST3FREE to receive 3-months free plus your domain with the purchase of any one year plan.